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TRANSPORTATION: New funding isn’t enough

Rural clients with Lambton Elderly Outreach’s transportation service are being hit hard by the agency’s budget shortfall.

The not-for-profit agency that serves the elderly and adults with disabilities said this month its $94,000 deficit troubles caused it to end subsidies for the transportation it provides clients to medical appointments, therapy and other activities.

Mary Lee MacDougall of Inwood said losing the subsidy will put the cost of her daughter’s daily trips to Sarnia-based programs out of reach.

An accident in 2008 left Nathania MacDougall, 33, with a brain injury. She lives next to her parents in the rural community and uses Lambton Elderly Outreach’s van service to attend rehabilitation and therapy programs in Sarnia.

“It’s to give her a life away from us, because we’re not always going to be here,” MacDougall said.

Her daughter’s small income comes from a structured insurance settlement and the subsidy lowered the cost of her daily rides to $15 from about $50, MacDougall said.

That discount is gone now.

Her family is only one of several in the rural community affected by the end of subsidies, she said.

“This is their life,” she said. “It would be like someone taking your wheels and saying, ‘Well, you can’t go to work now.”

MacDougall said her daughter has progressed more than doctors expected and she worries about what will happen if Nathania can’t afford to attend the programs and is cut off from friends she’s made.

“Now she enjoys herself, for the first time in about four years,” MacDougall said.

Ending the transportation fee subsidies was a question of sustainability for Lambton Elderly Outreach, said chief executive officer Agnes Soulard.

“This has been a very tough decision for us but it comes down to the fact that it’s unavoidable.”

Outreach receives $1.6 million from the province through the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN), along with $43,000 from the United Way, and the balance of its $2.4-million budget comes from fees, fundraising and donations.

Soulard said the agency is required to balance its budget and this is the first time it has faced a deficit in her 10 years at the helm.

She said the unsubsidized rate it charges transportation clients is already considerably lower than the cost of providing the service.

Offering subsidizes cost the agency about $57,000 between April and October, Soulard said.

The agency is also dealing with high maintenance costs for its aging fleet of vans and demand that’s tripled in the last five years “with little if any funding increase,” she said.

“We’d love to be able to continue to subsidize, but unfortunately we’re not able to.”

This week, the board of the Erie St. Clair LHIN approved an additional $40,225 in annual funding for Lambton Elderly Outreach.